Why it matters: Twitter's willingness to revisit unpopular changes and rethink core components of its platform could go a long way in helping to fuel growth, or at least keep existing users content.

What's old is new again at Twitter. The social networking platform on Tuesday reintroduced the option to sort your timeline in reverse-chronological order, showing the newest tweets first rather than those its algorithms think you'll like most.

Twitter launched its Facebook-style, algorithm-based timeline feature in early 2016. It wasn't universally loved, however, prompting the social network to conduct a test earlier this year to gauge interest in the old timeline.


To switch between the latest and top tweets in your timeline, simply tap the new sparkle icon at the top-right of the screen. The feature is available from today on iOS and will be heading to Android and the web after the holidays.

It's been possible to disable "Show best tweets first" for a while now but doing so didn't truly revert back to the old way of ordering things.

It's one of several core tenet changes Twitter has embarked on in recent memory. In November 2017, Twitter expanded its character limit from 140 to 280 in hopes of reducing cramming. Last month, the company tweaked profiles on iOS to put more emphasis on names and bios (and less emphasis on follower counts). This came after Twitter purged locked accounts from follower counts over the summer.

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